A Study on the Family Functioning in the Family with the Cancer Patient

암환자가족의 가족기능에 대한 조사연구

This study was designed to assess the level of family function between cancer patient's families and normal families, and to seek better quality family-Mcentered nursing care. The subjects for this study were 95 ca patient's families who were selected from th university hospitals and 95 normal families who selected from 1 university hospital. The instrument used for this study was McMaster Family Assessment Device (FAD) developed by Epstein, Baldwin and Bishop (1983). The scale consisted of 53 items covering 7 areas: 'problem solving', 'communication', 'roles', 'affective responsiveness', 'affective involvement', 'behavior control', and 'general functioning'. As for data analyses, descriptive statistics, ${\chi}^2-test$, t-test, ANOVA were adopted using SAS program. The result of this study was as follows: There there was no significant difference between cancer patient's family function and normal family function. Also there was no significant difference on cancer patient's family function with regard to family characteristics, disease's characteristics, and clinical stage of cancer.